Life is unglamorous for the Orlando Magic's roster invitees

Mickell Gladness, Manny Harris, Solomon Jones and Kris Joseph play professional basketball, but their lives lack glamour and certainty this month.

They live in an unspectacular hotel. They share a rental car. They practice, but playing time is rare.

They won't even get paid unless they beat the odds and make the Orlando Magic's regular-season roster.

The Magic invited Gladness, Harris, Jones and Joseph to join the team this month and compete for one or possibly two open roster spots with second-round pick Romero Osby. Although the players have signed contracts with the team, those deals are known within the NBA as "make-good" contracts. Those contracts entitle the players only to a food per diem during preseason road trips, reimbursements for hotel and transportation expenses and disability insurance.

"It's a small sacrifice you have to make for the bigger dream and the bigger picture," said Joseph, a 24-year-old swingman.

The "dream," of course, is making an NBA roster. Gladness, Harris, Jones and Joseph each has reached that goal at some point in his career. But at this stage, they also occupy a precarious place within the sport. They have no idea whether they will spend this season in the NBA, the NBA's minor league, an overseas league or, worse, with no team at all.

Practices are crucial this month. The workouts provide their best chances to impress the Magic coaching staff and front-office executives.

The invitees have no guarantee they'll appear in preseason games. They didn't play in Orlando's preseason-opening loss Wednesday in Jacksonville, and Harris and Jones played a total of 7 minutes, 40 seconds during Friday's exhibition loss against the Cleveland Cavaliers while Gladness and Joseph sat.

So the invitees need to be ready for — and make the most of — any opportunities they receive.

"I've had training camps where I went in and I tried to prove everything all at once and I tried to do too much," said Gladness, a 27-year-old center who has played for the Miami Heat, Golden State Warriors and a few teams in the NBA Development League.

"You put too much pressure on yourself, too much stress on yourself. And I've had situations where I made the team and all I've done was what I was supposed to do and I just consistently did it."

The invitees face an uphill slog to make the Magic's regular-season roster.

Hedo Turkoglu — who remains on the Magic's roster until the team buys out his contract, trades him or waives him outright — takes up the 14th spot.

An NBA team may have 13 to 15 players on its roster during the regular season.

So it would help the invitees' chances if the Magic release Turkoglu before the season-opener on Oct. 29.

But even if the team cuts Turkoglu before then, the Magic wouldn't be obligated to keep any of the invitees.

The current Magic front office has proven it's willing to keep an invitee on the roster. Last season, Orlando kept undrafted rookie DeQuan Jones and waived Quentin Richardson even though Richardson had a fully guaranteed salary of $2.6 million.

That example helped make the Magic attractive to Gladness, Manny Harris, Solomon Jones and Joseph.

They don't do much in their spare time these days.

"It's a boring kind of life, but this is what we signed up for," said Harris, a 24-year-old guard who played two seasons for the Heat. "It's a grind. You go home, and the only thing you think about is basketball."

"Home," at least for this month, is a hotel.

"As soon as you go into the room, your first thought is to lay in the bed, and that's something I hate to do: lay around all day," Joseph said. "But there's no real other options."

Joseph often uses the hotel's Wi-Fi to surf the Internet on his laptop or watch movies and TV shows on Netflix. He sometimes hangs out with Lamb at Lamb's home to play the video game NBA 2K14.

Solomon Jones, a 6-foot-10 big man who has played in 270 regular-season games for five NBA teams, at least is close to his boyhood home. He grew up in Mount Dora and still has family in the area.

"It's a golden opportunity for me," he said.

True. It's an opportunity. But it's an opportunity with no guarantees.

That's life for NBA players on make-good contracts.

jbrobbins@tribune.com. Read his blog at OrlandoSentinel.com/magicblog and follow him on Twitter at @JoshuaBRobbins.